August 12, 2014 — In addition to this week's NewsBreak(s), the editors have compiled the Weekly News Digest, featuring stories from the week just past that you should know about. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.

Total BooX, an ebook services company, will offer the titles in its ebook collection to eRC so that libraries can provide them to their patrons via their library catalog. Patrons will have unlimited access to titles, and Total BooX will charge libraries only for the pages that patrons read.

Mackin Educational Resources’ audiobooks, video resources, and ebooks will be integrated into eRC. This content, which is geared to students in preschool through 12th grade, extends eRC’s school library offerings. Libraries will be able to update their local title metadata and allow access to e-resources from their catalogs.

Wheelers Books, one of New Zealand’s largest online book suppliers to schools and public libraries, agreed to offer thousands of ebooks via eRC, which expands access to libraries using eRC across Asia and the Pacific.

IT management solutions provider Network Alliance became an Office 365 dealer, which allows the company’s small and medium business customers to use Office 365’s solutions: the ability to virtualize an office, collaborate on projects, access documents from any device, and other tools. Network Alliance offers 24/7 support for Office 365, from the installation process to continuously providing a fast response time for any Office 365-related problems while customers are conducting their daily business.

“Through becoming a certified Microsoft Office365 Dealer, we are giving our clients more flexibility in where they work and enable them to access critical data they need anytime, anywhere, while reducing costs,” says Don Britton, Network Alliance’s founder and CEO.

Knovel, which was acquired by Elsevier, introduced its new subject area collection. Composites comprises design, selection, analysis, testing, manufacturing, and repair information related to composite materials. It is intended to help information design and materials engineers make materials selection decisions during the early stages of the design process, including identifying composite materials and understanding potential performance gains or risks.

Sources for the collection come from institutions such as the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics), ASM International, Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter, and the Department of Defense.

Scribd completed updates to its website after a 4-month project that reshaped its users’ browsing experience. Categories were rebuilt from the top down; for example, niche subcategories such as Space Opera appear under the broad topic of Science Fiction.

Scribd’s editorial team also created curated collections that include Secret History, a selection of nonfiction titles about spies and related secret projects, and Behind the Scenes, which features ebooks about the offscreen events during the making of movies and TV shows.

Other key updates include Scribd Selects on each page with personal notes from Scribd editors and a Top Books page that displays best-sellers, award-winners, and trending titles.

The new browsing experience will soon be available for mobile devices.

IEEE will publish IEEE Life Sciences Letters (LSL), a peer-reviewed, open access (OA) journal, in 1Q 2015. This new digital title will feature manuscripts that apply methods of quantitative analysis to biological problems at the molecular, cellular, human, and other levels. Themes will include personalized medicine, pharmaceutical engineering, synthetic biology, and systems biology.

“Life Sciences is an extremely diverse and complex field, with computational and experimental technologies that are advancing at lightning speed. IEEE Life Sciences Letters will respond to the changing needs of clinicians, scientists and researchers who get more of their information from a screen, not a printed issue or textbook,” says Frank Doyle, IEEE LSL’s editor-in-chief.

Thomson Reuters rolled out Watchlist Pulse (for its Thomson Reuters Eikon), a buy-side-focused app that streamlines the workflows of portfolio managers, analysts, and traders by enabling them to monitor and review activities impacting the companies in their portfolios and coverage lists, such as price changes, news, and technical indicators. The app also tracks changes to recommendations, estimates, and target prices, as well as other analyst-related research.

Watchlist Pulse is compatible with other Eikon tools including its industry overview and screener apps.

Canadian Science Publishing (CSP) and ReadCube signed an agreement that makes CSP’s titles discoverable on ReadCube’s platform. ReadCube Discover will index CSP’s collection, which includes 16 peer-reviewed journals published by CSP’s NRC Research Press division, and enhance the content with hyperlinked in-line citations, annotations, social sharing, and access to supplemental content, among other extra features.

Integration with ReadCube’s web, desktop, and mobile reading portals will make CSP’s titles available to the company’s 5.7 million-plus global researchers.